All posts tagged Sikh

Kirty Singh, Gurwinder Singh, Namit Satara plan an upcoming trip to Washington D.C. for members of the Sikh Junior Coalition.

The Junior Sikh Coalition was created as a congregation of enthusiastic high school and college students eager to become young leaders in their faith. But just five days before its inaugural meeting, a gunman entered a Sikh house of worship in Oak Creek, Wisc., and fatally shot six people.

So instead of getting to know each other and hashing out an agenda at the first meeting, the teens essentially also found themselves holding a therapy session, trying to process the violent act.

While New York City abounds with youth leaders and budding community organizers, the Junior Sikh Coalition’s mission is as much about making Sikh teens feel comfortable and safe as it is about advocacy.

A survey by the Sikh Coalition in New York City found that many Sikh teens face abuse because of their faith. Of the 172 Asian American and Pacific Islander students surveyed earlier this year, including Sikhs, 48% said they had endured some form of bias-based harassment. The number is down from a high of 69 % in 2010, but still higher than advocates would like. Read More »

The Sikh Cultural Society in South Richmond Hill, Queens. Turbaned Sikhs in the U.S. were targeted by hate crimes in the aftermath of the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks.

By Siddhartha Vaidyanathan

Like countless New Yorkers, Amrik Singh Chawla remembers the moment. He had just exited a cab and was walking to the World Trade Center PATH station when he looked up and saw the large wheel of an airplane.

“A few seconds later, I heard a sound that’s louder than anything I’ve heard before,” he remembered in a recent interview. “It was the second plane flying into the other tower.”

As he moved away from the burning skyscrapers, Chawla came across another threat. “I found myself walking down Broadway,” he said, “and a couple of guys started yelling, “Hey, you better take your turban off.”

He walked faster as the men followed, finally running into the subway station at Canal Street and boarding a train. When he stepped off in Brooklyn, Chawla removed his turban.

Chawla, a Sikh who was 25 years old on Sept. 11, 2001, had experienced the first in what would become hundreds of bias incidents against his religious group in the weeks after the terrorist attacks. Read More »

Some Sikh cab drivers in Queens will be ferrying voters to and from polls Tuesday, free of charge. The gratis cab service is one of several ways that Harpreet Singh Toor, who is aspiring to be the first Sikh on City Council, has tried to tap into his closely-knit community.

Toor is one of several Indian-American candidates in the fray on Election Day. Walking around his district, which covers the neighborhoods of Richmond Hill, South Richmond Hill, South Ozone Park and Rochdale village in Queens, one can spot notices outside homes containing his picture and agenda.

“We’ve been going door-to-door and speaking to people instead of relying only on postal and electronic means,” said Toor, a real estate salesman who hosts a popular talk show in English on the cable TV station Jus Punjabi.